Wednesday

Our infrastructure automatically updates “offline address book” and distributes
changes to clients once that is submitted by Generation server.Microsoft System Attendant service
is answerable for the Generation of Offline Address Book, and server hold
mailbox role can only have this Service.

Everyday Offline Address Book is distributed to clients every 24 hours, if you
click on properties of Default offline Address List you will get the below
window, this is where you can customize your update schedule.

If there is any change that has occurred on your
infrastructure during working hours than you can try to force the generation
server to create the OAB and distribute the OAB through Web-based distribution:

Microsoft Outlook 2003 and older version receive Offline
AddressBook from the System Public folders located in Exchange, Offline
AddressBook Generation Server unwraps the public folder and renews the changes.

Microsoft Outlook 2007 and 2010 make user of AutoDiscover to
search the Offline AddressBook update link(url) and it connects to concerned
server that has the OAB files for distribution and i.e., Client Access Server
is answerable for any request to download OAB by outlook clients.

CAS specifically
has the MS Exchange File Distribution Service which pulls the OAB ExchangeOAB
files(folders) from Mailbox Server(OAB Generation Server) in Client Access
Server so that it can be distributed through web-based distribution point:

Web-based Distribution
Point Path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\ClientAccess\OAB
(Inside this will be a GUID folder which holds the OAB files)

As our OAB is now ready to be downloaded, Outlook clients
can download the OAB from Web-based Distribution point. In Outlook 2013 Click
in SEND/RECEIVE tan -> Click on
Send/Receive Groups > and Click on Download Address Book.

Monday

The Following error occurred while attempting to connect to the specified Exchange Server
Above error can easily be sorted using Below steps, we have tested it in our infrastructure and it works good.

Method 1:

Close all MMC/EMC instances before proceeding.
Open Registry Editor (regedit) as the user you run the EMC under.
Go toHKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ExchangeServer\v14\AdminTools
Look for value NodeStructureSetting.
If it is there, back it up and then remove it.

Method 2:

Close all MMC/EMC Instances before proceeding.Open Powershell or Powershell IDE as the user you run the EMC under and execute the following command:.Remove-ItemProperty -Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\ExchangeServer\v14\AdminTools\ -Name NodeStructureSettings
Close Powershell
After performing either of the methods above to remove the registry entry you should be able to open the Exchange Management Console and it will discover another Exchange server and connect.

Now Expand Server
Configuration and Select Mailbox, Select your server and check which
Database is Mounted, which one is in
Healthy mode and also check if any
of the Database is in Suspended mode,
if so Right Click the database and either click on Resume Database Copy or Update
Database Copy.

If the database was suspended for some time than there will be
Copy Queue Length and Replay Queue Length which will have some numbers but that
won’t be zero like the screenshot that I have added.

Copy queue length log files: Signifies the number of log files waiting to be
copied and checked.

Replay queue length log files: Signifies the number of log files waiting to be replayed
into suspended copy of the database from the active/working database copy.

This is really a crucial part of Monitoring Exchange Server 2010 if you have Tivoli Storage Manager on your infrastructure for Exchange Server Mailbox Backup than it
won’t perform the backup for the day., as it first performs a check if all the
database copy is either in healthy or mounted mode., but if found in Suspended
the automated backup will fail for the day.

Third:Network connectivity is properly functioning or not.

So this step you’ll have to perform on each server for both MAPI (Messaging Application Programming
Interface) and Replication network,
we will further explain in details about our Exchange Server 2010 Setup and
Installation in our upcoming articles/posts.

Expand Outlook.WinAdmin.local in your case that would be your own
name of NLB server, now check if
Initial Host State is started for both Hub
Transport and Client Access Server
or not, else you can right click the HTCAS1
or HTCAS2 and goto Control Host and start or stop the service as per your necessity.

Fifth:Monitoring Disk Space for
all the Exchange Servers

WinAdminHTCAS1:

WinAdminHTCAS2:

WinAdminMAILBOX1:

WinAdminMAILBOX2:

If mailbox database is going to fill up the drives than you must
indulge with your Clients and check if they are ok with adding more drives on
the Storage slots or else you can send mail to start archiving users mail as
per some set up policies to those faulty users, this can easily be done with
PowerShell scripts., we will update the same in our upcoming posts.

On Client machine Open Microsoft Outlook 2013 and configure
Mail Account for Holiday Calendar. If you don't get below window then goto "Control Panel" -> Select Mail -> Click On Show Profiles -> And Add New Profile then you'll get the similar window as below:

Thursday

How easy would it be if you can check all your holidays of a year without searching the email of your HR,
as at times you can be lucky and you have the email in front of you., but other times you may not be so
lucky so we are discussing below how easily you can have all this information collected with few clicks
for your office location.

Recently we had a requirement where Microsoft OUTLOOK.HOL file was not mitigating our necessity.
Our Client was seeking something more easy way and less task from end user point of view, so we went
through testing and came with two viable ways through which we can share Holidays calendar throughout
the organizationand for different locations without much trouble from end user.

Our Infrastructure has Windows
2008 R2, so we have used the same for below task:

Create a new Group
Policy for the same:

Goto Run from your Primary Domain Controller, and type"gpmc.msc"->
Expand domain -> Right Click Group Policy Objects -> Click New ->
Enter the Name of the GPO and Click Ok.

Right click the Newly created GPO and expand User
Configuration -> Expand Policies -> Expand Windows Settings -> Select
Scripts (logon/logoff) and add the batch files that we created earlier.

Group Policy

There is a drawback that this script will keep renaming the
OUTLOOK.HOL file each time users keeps login in, so when you think that all the
changes to OUTLOOK.HOL has been replicated throughout your infrastructure you
can disable the Group Policy till the next change on the for the Holidays Calendar.

No worries if the above steps is not feasible for your
infrastructure we will post another easy way you can share calendars for each
locations in your Infrastructure.